Question Type:
Inference (must be true)
Stimulus Breakdown:
READ FOR: Conditional / Causal language (secondarily for Quantitative / Comparative language)
Conditionals:
"ability to judge greatness --> years of training"
"becoming a lit professor --> years of training".
("only" = right side, and the Req'd thing is always the Right side)
Fact: Most readers don't have these years of training.
Answer Anticipation:
When we get multiple conditionals, we ask ourselves, "Do they chain together?" When we get any conditional, we ask ourselves "Is there any thing we're told about that triggers this rule (or its contrapositive)?"
These two conditionals don't chain together, because they have the same right side. But we could create a compound conditional and say that "If you don't have specialized training, then you can't judge greatness AND can't be a lit professor".
Do we have any facts that would trigger this rule? Yes, the final sentence says "most people who can read don't have this specialized training". So what does the rule allow us to infer?
"most people who can read Can't Judge Greatness AND Can't Be Lit Professor".
Correct Answer:
E
Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) No, the LP doesn't need to believe she can judge greatness. Because she's an LP, we know she's had years of training. But having the training doesn't guarantee you can judge greatness .. It's just necessary to judge greatness.
(B) No, this reads "if you're not an LP, you can't judge greatness". We don't have any conditional logic like that. We have "If you're an LP, you've had training" and "If you can judge greatness, you've had training". You can't chain those together to get what (B) is saying. More conversationally, it's compatible with the LP's beliefs that people besides lit professors also might have years of training. We know it's rare, but it doesn't need to be exclusie to lit professors.
(C) As soon as we see "should", we should leave this answer behind. Nothing in the text had normative language.
(D) What a crazy thing to say. No, the lit professor can still consider herself to be part of the reading public. She's part of the minority of the reading public that has access to specialized training.
(E) YES, as we predicted. We know that "most readers CAN'T JUDGE GREATNESS and CAN'T BE LIT PROFESSORS". This provides us with one of the facts we inferred.
Takeaway/Pattern: Most Inference questions reward our ability to combine ideas using Conditional or Causal language. When you read for Conditional language and see "only after" and "what is required", you know they're testing conditional logic. See if anything chains together. See if there are any facts provided that might trigger one or more of the rules.
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